The borough council is puzzling over how to address this and two other homes that have been abandoned since Hurricane Irene.

WOODLAND PARK - The borough is grappling with what to do about three flood prone homes on Bergen Boulevard that have been abandoned since Hurricane Irene and are becoming an eyesore.

Although an $850,000 Community Development Block Grant for disaster relief funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development is set to go towards buyouts of the homes, the municipality is having trouble reaching homeowners and so far has been unable to complete the transactions.

Two of the owners have left the town and have no intent to return, while the other is deceased, Susan Scavone, principal of the borough's grant writing firm Millenium Strategies told the council on Sept. 19. And the government will not give buyout money to a bank left responsible for a home, something that will soon be the case here.

"At the end of the day the federal government wants to buy from a person, not an institution," she said.

Borough administrator Kevin Galland said the grant program is intended to be a voluntary buyout program for homeowners, not a way "to bail out the banks."

However, officials are motivated to get these homes bought out and demolished because, they say, their poor quality is starting to adversely impact the neighborhood.

"I feel sorry more for the people in the area because they're looking at these dilapidated homes," Council President Gary Holloway said in a phone interview. "My concern is rodent infestation and... the cumulative build-up of mold in the home."

His concerns are supported by code enforcement officer Felix Esposito. "My professional opinion at this point is that they are not fit for human occupancy," he told Passaic Valley Today.

At the council meeting, Esposito said that two of the homes are moving into foreclosure.

Now, borough officials are worried that as they invest money into assessing the homes and addressing environmental concerns, they may be stuck with the bill if the homeowners do not participate, according Galland.

"All we want to know from the state is if the state will reimburse the municipality if at the end of the day the owners don't come to the table," he said. They have not received the desired answer.

To address the matter, the mayor and council convened a committee headed up by Councilwoman Tracy Kallert.

"This is not the ideal situation," she said. "The ideal situation is when there's money to purchase and there's a willing homeowner - that's the perfect situation. Here we have abandoned homes and nobody to get in touch with."

Although the decision is not final, they may be seeking to invest the funds in other borough properties.

Scavone recommends they pick homes most severely impacted by flooding.

"We just can't pick any old house," she said. "We have to be strategic because at the end of the day the benefit has to outweigh the cost to the borough."

But she also said, "We don't only want to do the worst of the worst because then you have that jack-o-lantern effect," a reference to when some homes get bought out and others do not in the same neighborhood, leaving vacant lots.

However, if they can get the funds in the right hands, the future looks up for whichever property gets them.

"Even though we're returning it to green space, we're not required to just turn it into grass," Scavone said. "We can have butterfly gardens. We can have some light structures."

So what will happen to the abandoned homes? Esposito has a thought.

"These particular homes: they walked away and left them to the mortgage companies," he said. "It's just a matter of time until we have to go in there and knock them down."